


outside these walls, a revolution

by omegal14 (unheard_secret)



Series: Shameless [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Omegaverse, world building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-30
Updated: 2014-07-30
Packaged: 2018-02-11 01:50:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2048730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unheard_secret/pseuds/omegal14
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the age of seven, Sherlock read George Meer's <i>The Sterile Omega</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	outside these walls, a revolution

**Author's Note:**

> The works referenced in this are paraphrased, but based on real works. The first two are pretty clear (Plato and Wikipedia), the third -- slightly more obscured one -- is The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer. It had a huge impact on me when I read it years ago, and I can't help thinking it would do that same for Sherlock.

_Now the sexes were three, and such as I have described them; because the sun, moon, and earth are three; and the alpha was originally the child of the sun, the beta of the earth, and the omega of the moon_ \-- Aristophanes Speech from Plato's _Symposium_

 _Gender is a range of physical, mental and behavioural characteristics distinguising between masculinity and femininity. It is distinct from biological sex (i.e. the state of being Alpha, Beta or Omega). Many people conflate the two, and the six genders are often reduced to three simple facsimile's of an individuals reproductive system._ \-- Wikipedia: Gender

At the age of seven, Sherlock read George Meers The Sterile Omega. He was at his mother's home in Belgravia for his holidays, where he was given free reign of the dark pannelled nursery, and its ajoining rooms. His only companions were his nursery maids, who came and went with such frequency, that he had forgone learning their names years before, and started assigning them colours instead. Deep blue, violet, indigo, ochre, the maids would leave so quickly that Sherlock learnt not to expect them to stay a week.

It had been the teal nursery maid who had left The Sterile Omega in the nursery by accident, presumably while cleaning the rooms in preparation for his return from his father's estate in the country. Sherlock had found the book the afternoon he arrived, and had hidden it away, knowing that even if the nursery maid never returned to retrieve it -- and she didn't, she was asked to leave the next day -- he would be best served by hiding it in any case. 

The Sterile Omage's cover was plain enough, at first glance. A soft silver haze, almost shapeless, against a black background. But, a closer look, revealed that the haze was a bare breasted female torso with its head tilted back so that its throat was bared in supplication. And, a closer look again, made it clear that the dark glistening mist pouring from a slash in the throat, just below the omega’s collar, was thick mercurial blood. 

With a cover as affronting as its title, Sherlock knew that what he held wasn't something his mother would allow him to keep if she discovered it. He'd already had several books confiscated because his mother hadn't deemed them age appropriate, and no matter how much Sherlock protested that he was intellectually advanced enough to comprehend them, his mother never wavered from her calm refusal to return the books. Sherlock knew that he was fighting a losing battle by demanding intellectual freedoms beyond those his mother allowed. At seven, Sherlock had little choice but to concede, ungracefully, to her desires. 

Still, his mother couldn't take the book away if she didn't know he had it, so he slid it under his bed, to be read furtively in the depths of the night. 

...

That night, Sherlock began Meer's book, pouring over the pages once he could be sure the nursery maid wouldn't be checking in on him again. 

The book started, _Evangelism has withered into eccentricity, it is time to call once again for revolution. This book is a demand for a second wave; a second push for omega equality. Much ground has been covered in the last four decades, but there are leagues yet to travel before the journey is complete._

Sherlock peered at the opening paragraph, a small frown furrowing his brow. A second wave for omega equality? Sherlock was surprised to learn there had been a first. Surely most omegas were like his mother; content to be what they were, and unhappy with the thought of anything else? He knew it was probably a sign of his youth -- a frustrating thought, and one he disliked to even countenance -- but he could barely conceive of anything else. 

Sherlock was aware on some level that he was sheltered by the rigid conservative boundary that was constructed by Belgravia's blurred border. He was also aware that he was being given a highly tailored education, informed by the rigid anglicanism enforced at his preparatory school. But he hadn't been aware that there were revolutions happening in Britain, just outside the walls of his upbringing. It was hard to comprehend anything outside the rigidly defined hierarchy of alpha, beta and omega that surrounded him every day. 

Sherlock bit his lip. Perhaps it was a figure of speech? Everybody Sherlock knew -- every alpha, beta, and omega -- seemed content with their role in life. Omega equality seemed like such an odd turn of phrase. It rang false, like an oxymoron. Sherlock mouthed it quietly, but no matter how he turned it about, he couldn't make it sit comfortably on his tongue. Biting his lip, he read on.

_No justification for omega equality should be needed, but there is no conviction in any argument for liberation that does not first delve into the degree of inferiority and social dependence that is thrust unwanted and uneeded upon the omega. That is why this book starts by disecting the anatomy of the omega at its most basic level. We need to know what we are, before we can know what we might become. The status quo is not a result of some ineluctable law, and omegas need to learn the basic assumptions about their gender in order to reopen the possibilities for development that have been shut off by human conditioning. So, I begin at the begining, with the sex of the cells..._

Sherlock reread the paragraph and slowly parsed through its meaning. He'd been reading since the age of three, but the language in this book had an oddly stilted quality. There were words there Sherlock didn't understand, and he had to take his time extracting their meaning from their context. Eventually he was ready to continue, and he began again with the second paragraph, reading about the extent to which chromosomal differences were only a smoke screen for social assumptions about behaviour.

...

_The first assumption we have when we look at an omega -- their body, their behaviour -- should be that every little thing we observe **could be otherwise**. When an omega falls at an alpha's feet, collapsed upon their knees, it is the socially conditioned response; no child grows old in a vacuum, and because of that fact our gender comes to distort the very behaviour of our skeleton._

_Most omegas don't present until late adolesence. At ten or eleven, their world changes overnight, and as it stands, the ensuing years involve a period of intense indoctrination. They are taken from their cross gender schools, and placed in facilities that cater for omega students where they are taught to be passive, weak and willing..._

...

Sherlock read the first chapter in one sitting, and it was only when he finished that he paused for long enough to let what he had read sink in. 

He sat on his bed, the book loose in once hand, and shifted uncomfortably thinking of everything the book had said and what it meant for his own life. He thought of his mother, shouting at his father when she was angry, but falling silent with nothing but his father's hand pressing against the nape of her neck. He thought of his nursery maids, looking at the floor whenever Mycroft entered a room. He thought of the fact that every omega he knew was a servant or a mother. He thought of the fact that every politician was an alpha. He sat back against his headboard and curled his knees up to his chest, wrapping his small arms around them while he thought. 

He sat for so long that he almost didn't notice the sound of feet in the hall outside his door. He only just managed to slip the book down beside his bed before there was a soft tap on the door. 

"Go to sleep, Sherlock." The soft voice of the teal nursery maid echoed through the door. 

"Yes, Beatrice," he called back softly. He uncurled from his sitting position, slowly lying down in his bed. 

 

He leant over and turned off the bedside light. Moments later, Beatrice's footsteps could be heard again as she walked away. 

Sherlock lay in the dark, awake and uneasy, his mind going over and over the book that was tucked down the side of his bed. He felt like the world around him was being turn on its head. The simple realities that he had thought were undeniable truths – an omega’s desire to submit to their alpha, an alpha’s need to take responsibility for their omega– it had all become hazy; echoing the omega made from mist on the cover of the book. 

He wondered what else about human behaviour was a lie. Sherlock had always been perceptive, but his brother had encouraged him to look to science and reason for his answers. Mycroft scoffed at the ‘soft sciences’ that looked at human behaviour and human psychology. He’d told Sherlock that humans were perfectly predictable. ‘Everyone wants something,’ he’d murmured to Sherlock. ‘You just have to figure out what it is.’

Sherlock rolled over in his bed, facing away from the door. Perhaps Mycroft was right, and Sherlock just needed to expand the scope of the question. When Mycroft had said the words, Sherlock had assumed he’d been referring to predicable wants; understandable desires. He thought Mycroft had spoken of mummy’s desire to kneel at their father’s feet, or their father’s desire to have all the pretty omega servants bow to him in the hallway. 

He’d thought that Mycroft was referring to the natural biological instinct of an alpha, beta or omega. 

But now Sherlock wondered what it was like to be an omega who didn’t want an alpha, or an alpha attracted to someone of the same sex. 

He wondered what it was like to be attracted to no one at all.


End file.
